Kanye West Fancies Himself A Production Designer??
If you were in the New York metro area this morning, and you happened to be within the range of FM radio station 97.1 (or Hot 97, as it’s affectionately called), and listening around 7:35 or so, you would have heard Kanye West sharing his philosphy on–of all things–production design. He started talking about how he has been in discussions with folks like Gwen Stefani and Trent Reznor, and basically how production values really matter.
But then (this is where it gets good), the host asked him if all that production is really necessary and why not just walk back and forth across the stage and let his voice speak for itself. Kanye then started talking about how he’s been to shows where there are towels and water bottles on the stage, and a DJ might have a laptop with stickers showing, which he feels is a sloppy look and that productions need to be cleaned up. He noted the use of moving lights specifically, saying that they should be hidden because “they ugly.”
Now, here’s where it get’s really good. The hip-hop artist then went on to refer to Sunday’s Grammy Awards, calling attention to his live performance with M.I.A., Jay-Z, T.I. and Lil Wayne. He said that he spent approximately 30 minutes taping and cleaning up the set before he would perform. Then he topped it all of by saying he wants to be bigger than Elvis.
Really, Kanye?! Really?! I wonder what Bob Dickinson, with his closet full of Emmy Awards, thinks of that sort of commentary.
February 11th, 2009 at 11:06 am
Not to discount the man’s somewhat freakish need to micro-manage everything in his life but…he’s not necessarily wrong.
Moving lights are, in fact, ugly. If they were all that attractive you wouldn’t see architectural installations painting them various colors in an attempt to camouflage them into the environment. The advantage of live production is that the units are usually hung somewhat out of the audience’s view and thus don’t require as much “dressing”. In Kanye’s case, it’s no secret that he prefers to have a plethora of units on the deck and more exposed to the audience’s view. With that in mind, it’s easy to understand why he’s sensitive to their aesthetic.
He’s certainly not alone in his line of thinking. Many designers go out of their way to hide or dress certain elements of their rig with things such as teaser drapes. Many of us don’t necessarily agree with Kanye’s seemingly uber sensitivity to such things but you can’t knock his appreciation for attention to detail. What he probably fails to take into account is the varying level of production budgets on other artist’s shows. His shows tend to be well budgeted whereas many of his hip-hop brethren are unwilling to afford lavish designs, thus stickers on a laptop are sometimes the pinnacle of their scenic design. It’s all relative.
As far as having towels and water bottles on the stage…well…Ye’s usually a dehydrated, sweaty mess at the end of a performance but he obviously feels that those things shouldn’t be onstage so to each his own. We’ll keep them on the FOH rider though.
February 11th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
Well…
That number was one of the best in the show… The clean beautiful black and white treatment was right on in communicating high end elegance… But it did not suffer from the lighting in view. Production values necessarily (usually) require profusions of gear in spectacles that large. We all know that televised events have different needs, primarily that of having interesting backdrop elements available in any shot. Usually negative space is the enemy of broadcast design. In live design it is a balance of subjective viewpoint on seeing gear as opposed to having it masked and integrated in sets. There are designers that favor this approach with certain artists and it works. Willie Williams clearly de-emphasises the medium.
If he DID actually take the time to demand a cleaned up stage, to patrol and eliminate distractions, then I say kudos to him for caring.
I think there are plenty of designers who don’t spend much time beyond “let’s throw crap up there and use it”… But I also think that there are plenty of thoughtful designers out there who DO think about all of this. Certainly Jon Goldstein (Kanye’s designer) is one of them.
February 15th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
There are few things that would entertain me more than to see Kanye, in his sunglasses of course, taping out the stage before a show.
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